Personal Grooming for the Modern Man
by twasadark
Summary: Dean gets whammied. Sam gets freaked.


When Sam and Dean motored into Raleigh, South Carolina, on the trail of a spell-casting witch, it took them all of five minutes to find her. The billboard advertising her occult bookshop was pretty helpful in that regard.

They walked into the shop and Dean, with his usual amount of finesse and tact, confronted her.

"I am _not_ a witch," Fredericka Beauregard informed Dean archly. "I am a _sorceress_."

Dean did not look impressed. "Yeah, whatever, lady. Just stop casting spells at people or we'll have to take you down."

"Dean!" Sam cried, aghast at his brother's rudeness.

Fredericka's eyes narrowed. It wasn't a pretty sight. In fact, very little about Fredericka was pretty. Chunky and middle-aged, with a bouffant hairdo and a penchant for gaudy jewelry, she stood out in a crowd. Not in the least because she wore so much mascara that her eyelashes looked like tarantula legs.

"You need some manners, boy," Fredericka said.

Dean snorted. "I got plenty of manners. And they don't include casting spells on innocent people."

"Dean …" Sam trailed off.

"What?" Dean said, in annoyance.

"Look, she hasn't actually _hurt_ anyone …"

"Yet. And do we have to have this conversation in front of the witch?"

"I told you, I'm a _sorceress_," Fredericka said.

"And I'm Batman."

Sam took Dean's arm and steered him to the corner of the store, over by the fountains and wind chimes. "Look, Dean, casting a few love spells and lottery winning spells here and there really isn't all that bad. Can't we just give her a warning and keep an eye out to make sure she doesn't go off the deep end? There are, like, a million demons that we should be hunting instead of one little—well, somewhat little—old—okay, somewhat old—lady."

Dean put one hand on the back of his neck. With the other, he reached out to toy with a porcelain figure that looked sorta like an angel, but might also have been an abominable snowman, on the table beside them. "I don't know, Sammy. Just letting her go doesn't feel right."

Sam sighed. "You know, Dean. Not every case has to be a big, dramatic angst-fest. Even for us. Let's just let this one go, okay?"

Dean gave him an appraising, sidewise glance. "Yeah, all right. But if anything happens, it's on your head."

Sam nodded, pleased. "Thanks, bro."

Dean spent the next ten minutes threatening an increasingly irritated Fredericka with various and sundry unpleasantries if she didn't lay off the spellwork. Then they got in the car and took off.

As they drove away, Sam noticed Fredericka watching them through the lace curtains.

He didn't see her go to the shelf where her spell book lay and thumb through the pages until she paused at one spell in particular.

They hadn't even left the city limits before Dean was yawning. "Man, I'm beat."

"It's not even 2 pm," Sam commented.

"Your point being?"

"Fine. If you want to get a room this early, be my guest."

Whereupon Dean immediately flipped a U and zoomed into the parking lot of a motel with a nautical theme. When he got out of the car, Dean groaned and stretched, bending over at the waist and scooching his feet back until both hands were flat on the ground. Then he arched his back and stretched more, rising onto his tiptoes.

"What are you …?" Sam began, but Dean was already standing up and heading toward the motel office like nothing had happened.

Okay. That was a little strange.

They registered for the room and set up for the evening like usual, though, so Sam didn't think anything of it. While Sam kicked his shoes off and flopped back on the bed to do a little web surfing on the laptop, Dean opened the curtain until a slant of sunlight spilled over his bed, then promptly curled up in the patch of sunlight and fell asleep.

After about an hour, Sam found himself yawning as well. He closed his laptop and rolled over on his side for a little nap of his own.

He woke up about twenty minutes later. Dean was kneeling next to Sam's bed, one of Sam's shoes held up to his nose. Sam blinked and rubbed his eyes.

"Dean? Are you _smelling_ my shoe?" he squawked.

Dean looked up, and took one last, deep whiff before dropping the shoe without a whit of embarrassment. "Sammy. You're awake. Good."

He clambered up onto Sam's bed and curled up next to him, with his knees pulled up into his chest and his forehead pressed against Sam's bicep. He rubbed his head up and down Sam's arm, nuzzling him.

Sam froze, his brain short-circuiting. He must have missed something between this morning and the point within the last 90 minutes when Dean went irrevocably insane.

Then Dean lifted his head, leaned over, and licked a big wet sloppy stripe up the middle of Sam's forehead.

Sam leaped up, flinging himself to the far wall, heart thundering in his breast. Dean sat up, looking a little hurt. "You don't have to leave."

"What … the fuck, dude?" Sam choked out. "Why did you do that?"

"I … couldn't seem to stop myself," Dean admitted. He held his palm up, then turned it over and began licking the back of his hand, in long slow swipes to the end of his fingertips. His head was moving in gentle little jerks, making him look for all the world like a 6'2" shorn-haired kitten ….

"Oh my God!" Sam exclaimed. "You think you're a cat, don't you?"

Dean looked at Sam in confusion. "No."

"Then why are you licking your hand?"

"Because it's dirty."

Sam took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He had to think rationally. That's when something rather mortifying occurred to him. "You don't feel like licking yourself any place else, do you? Like, somewhere …" He trailed off, making a vague motion at his backside.

"… where the sun don't shine?" Dean finished helpfully. "No. Can't reach." He glanced at Sam, sizing him up. "But _you_ could," he said with a hopeful expression.

Sam lunged for the keys on the end table, hooking a hand under Dean's elbow and hauling him to the Impala, where he deposited Dean in the front seat. Then he leaped into the driver's seat and pealed out of the parking lot at upwards of fifty miles an hour. Dean had managed to snatch one of Sam's shoes on the way out the door. He cradled it against his chest during the entire five minute drive to Fredericka's shop, pausing to sniff it in rapture several times.

Sam left him in the car with strict orders to STAY PUT while he dashed into Fredericka's shop, stormed past the smirking woman, and ransacked the place until he found her spell book.

She wasn't smirking after he set the damn thing on fire.

Afterward, he wasted no time leaving. Not in the least because she was screaming profanities at him and lobbing various decorative items (some of which were quite heavy) at his head.

The ride back to the motel was conducted in utter and complete silence.

Once there, Dean held his hands out for the Impala's keys, which Sam turned over without an argument.

Dean drove away while Sam wandered around the hotel room, a bit stunned by the afternoon's turn of events.

When Dean came back fifteen minutes later, he was carrying a 24-pack of Budweiser and a 4-pack of Bud Light. He handed Sam the Bud Light, and set the 24-pack on his own bed.

"Now, I am going to drink _all_ of this. And I'm going to forget that today ever happened. If you would like to live until you turn 25, I would suggest you never mention it again."

Turns out Dean wasn't kidding.

They spent the rest of the evening watching re-runs of _The Andy Griffith Show_ and getting plastered. Dean didn't talk until he was really really drunk and then all he had to say were rather inane observations about the way the room was spinning or the fact that Sam hadn't combed his hair since lunch time.

Sam didn't even heckle Dean in the morning when he came back from eating a sausage biscuit at McDonald's to find Dean yakking it up in front of the porcelain goddess.

On the way out of Raleigh later that morning, though, Sam couldn't resist cuing up a cassette tape of Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever."

Please review! Although, I warn you, this will may encourage me to continue writing this sort of tomfoolery. I'm impressionable that way.


End file.
